SUNY ESF
Course Reserves
What are Course Reserves?
Course reserve is a library service that provides access to materials such as books, textbooks, articles, and other material that a professor has requested that the library make available to students for a short-term loan.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is a Course Reserve?
- How do I borrow a Course Reserve?
- How long can I have a Course Reserve for?
- How many Course Reserves can I take out at once?
Search Course Reserves
You can search by department and course number, instructor, or title in the reading list.
Course Reserves
Books for Reserve
- Complete an online reserve form or fillable reserve form for each reserve book. Be sure your name appears in any personal book you bring in for the reserve collection. If you do not want reserve labels placed directly on the cover of your personal reserve items, please submit the items with book covers securely attached to them.
- Library owned books should be turned in to the Main Desk with the completed reserve form inside the book.
Miscellaneous Materials for Reserve
Homework solutions, old exams, lecture notes, CD's, etc. may all be placed on reserve. Complete a reserve form for each item. Please submit lecture notes, homework solutions, and old exams in a 3-ring notebook. Due to space limitations, the Library cannot accept maps, equipment, or other large bulky items for reserve.
General Guidance for electronic materials:
- It is often impossible for the library to purchase an electronic textbook. Publishers simply don’t license them to libraries.
- The library can most of the time purchase e-books if they are available. Not all monographic works are available as e-books, not all can be purchased by academic libraries.
- Some films are available to license for streaming classroom use. The price can range from reasonable to shocking. The TEACH Act grants provisions to digitize films for distance education, however the digitization and hosting is not a service that the library provides.
- Materials placed on reserve should be made available for students and faculty only while the course runs, and should be removed after the course is no longer in session.
These guidelines for placing materials on reserve have been designed so that your material may be processed efficiently, accurately, and quickly.
To remain copyright compliant with photocopied materials please ensure that:
- Photocopied materials must be submitted "loose." That is unbound and not "re-packaged" in any way.
- A complete citation must appear on the first page of each item. Photocopied reserve items will not be processed without this information.
- Complete a reserve form for each reserve article.
- The Library will accept up to five copies of a photocopied item for reserve. Only one reserve form is required for multiple copies.
- A letter of copyright permission from the copyright holder must accompany photocopied copyrighted material that has been previously submitted for reserve.
If a patron takes out a library item before it has been placed on reserve they have exclusive use of this item for 21 days, per library policy. Please take this into consideration and request the library material you plan on using for reserve well ahead of time, allowing enough time to recall any material that may be already checked out of the library.
Please allow at least two weeks processing time at the beginning of a semester for all course reserve items. You may, of course, add materials during the semester. You should allow at least two full work days for the items to be processed. Please keep in mind this processing time when announcing availability of reserve materials to your students. Materials are processed in the order in which they are received.
Having the material prepared correctly and following the copyright guidelines will ensure that your reserves will be processed in a timely manner. Instructions showing how materials should be prepared are at the bottom of this page and are available at the Main Desk in Moon Library. Please share the instructions with your teaching assistant(s), or anyone else that may be taking care of your reserves for you. Reserve items turned in under a TA's name or any student's name will not be processed for Reserve. Material that is not prepared or prepared incorrectly may be sent back to you through campus mail for correction, thereby delaying its availability.
Due to space limitations on the reserve shelves we require that reserve material be restricted to required readings rather than suggested or casual readings. You may have on reserve a maximum of 20 items at any given time.
Every item (photocopy, book, etc.) you place on reserve must have a reserve form with all of the information filled in. When completed the reserve forms become a catalog of the material on reserve each semester. The reserve form is available at the top of this page or at the Main Desk in Moon Library.
All materials placed on reserve will remain on reserve status if it is in use. Any library owned item which has not been checked out in one academic year will be moved into the main collection.
Personal items which are on reserve will be subject to the same policy: anything that has not circulated in the past year will be taken off reserve and returned to your campus address. Otherwise, all items will stay on our reserve shelf so long as they are used or until you choose to withdraw them.
- Text: (315) 557-6791
- Call: (315) 470-6711
- Email Us
- Chat with a Librarian